I’m hoping to spend 3 months in Canada and would like to pet sit whilst I’m there. Do you have any tips on how to secure back-to-back sits? Am i likely to have odd days between sits?
Thanks.
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I have been sitting full-time for many years and while I will typically have some gaps when sitting internationally and moving from one country to another, when my husband and I sit in the US, we can book back to back sits no problem since there are so many and in the rarer instances when we do have a gap, it usually isn’t more than a night.
Canada does not have as many sits on the site as places like the UK and the US, but there are a decent enough amount that you should be able to fill your schedule with minimal gaps. There are also at least a couple of Canada-specific sites that you might consider joining and may be even more useful than here. I have never sat there so I can’t share any personal experience in that regard.
If you are looking to minimize gaps by booking sits that start the same day another ends, it will be really important to confirm departure and arrival times with hosts at the outset so you know if you would have enough time to get to the destination of the next sit, if you can arrive by time they would need you there.
Some hosts may be really flexible with your departure time while others may want you to stay until at least a certain time, so this is something you want to know going into the sit as it will help you determine your planning for the next one you may book.
Another thing I would say is do your best not to book sits solely because they work well for your schedule if they don’t seem like a good fit or intuitively something feels off. Figure out your deal breakers and what is most important and let that guide you.
Of course I may make some smaller compromises for a shorter sit that fills a gap between longer ones, but overall, you don’t want fear of not finding a sit to fill available dates to be the main driver of the ones you select.
Consider the possibility you may have some gaps and decide if that is something you can afford. Consider if a sit were to get cancelled, or you had to leave early for some reason–bad situation, owner returning early-- and you couldn’t find something, do you have the money to pay for alternate accommodation?
It is one thing to be drawn to housesitting because of the financial advantages and another to feel heavily dependent on it for financial reasons, and for people in the latter camp, it can lead to a lot of issues and they need to think carefully about these scenarios–not saying this is you specifically, I am just talking about this in a general sense.
Good luck!
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Not something we can really answer here. As already said, countries with a ton of sits make it easier to book back-to-back. For Europe, not UK, for instance, that’s much harder due to a much smaller number of sits available in combo with a large number of keen sitters.
Plus THS doesn’t allow overlapping sits anymore. So if you’re sit ends on e.g. Sunday morning, and you see another sit that starts on Friday evening (which technically means 2 days overlap), you won’t be able to apply even if the hosts are flexible. Only workaround is having 2 accounts…
Example: I’m currently in Australia for 2.5 months. Limited number of sits in the 2 big cities I’m staying in. Available sits in those cities fill up quickly due to the 5 application rule. I managed to secure a 1 month sit. Then I have another sit lined, which starts 1 month after the first one ends.
For the 1 month gap in between, I have 1) not found any sits that would nicely fill the gap in terms of dates. The best I’ve found is ~2 weeks; and 2) have not had any success securing a sit in that period so far: too many applicants, many HOs seem to prefer local sitters. I keep applying but clearly you need a back-up plan in such cases
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It’s a shame you didn’t join another site that is purely for Australian sits.
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I did join one - and have had no luck there either.
I’ve applied for tons of sits in the past 2-3 months via AussieHouseSitters and if I get a reply back (often not), all I do get back is along the lines of ‘thank you, we’ve now found a sitter’. When I follow up to ask them, the answer I get back (again, if I get an answer back of course) is always ‘we’ve been swamped with applications’
Oh I’m so sorry to hear that. I had better luck with that site. I also got 2 sits via Facebook which worked out very well although I don’t think that’s the best way to get sits normally.
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We did 6 months of back-to-back sitting in the UK, with no or very minimal gaps. If there were any gaps, we just spent a night or 2 in an Airbnb. This was easy to do in the UK, because THS has a lot of members there and there are hundreds of sits in UK, all the time. It has been harder to find back-to-back sits in broader Europe, as it’s less popular, and we have done most sits outside the UK with Nomador and a Dutch website. I’m not sure how finding back-to-back sits in Canada will go with THS - definitely try to find longer sits if you can that cover at least a month or 2 each, so you only have to find 2 or 3 consecutive sits. It could be an idea to look for specific Canadian pet sit sites, if there are any, or join Canadian pet sit Facebook groups. I did a quick search for ‘Canada’ in THS (with no search filters or anything) and currently there are 334 active listings on the site, compared to the UK, where there are currently 1,435 active listings, and the U.S, where it’s 2,277.
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Irrelevant post deleted
yes, on the various Facebook groups as well, although more listings of backpackers looking to do petsitting than actual listings on offer.
Anyway, don’t want to hijack this thread. Was just using it as an example that you can’t predict whether you’ll be able to line up back to back sits in a country that doesn’t have a flood of them such as the UK. And thus you need to have the financial ability for a backup plan
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I think you have gotten a lot of good advice, particularly @KC1102 .
From my point of view - it seems that fellow members that for different reasons go into a sit making many compromises/ overlooking gut feeling/ making excuses for the other party to make it feel better - can have a higher probability of ending up in not so good situations. So having a plan B, a possibility (and /or funds) to be able to be more choosy can be important to get good sits. Not for funds or similar alone. I think the attitude itself can help - the attitude of being resourceful and able to make choices. Self care, really. So best of luck on your adventures - and take care of yourself!
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My husband and i did 3 months of back to back sits in Colorado earlier this year.
I made a color-coded spread sheet and entered all the sits that interested us and matched the dates up and started applying. Once we secured the first sit i looked at the spread sheet and applied to the next sits that matched up.
I would suggest starting in an area where there are usually lots of sits, like Toronto.
We did take one sit that worked for the dates but i wasnt really happy with. After that we got pickier.
We only had three days without a sit. The first one was because we wanted to do a longer repeat sit. The other two days were because we extended our stay in Colorado and had become pickier. For these three days we stayed at a hostel (so much cheaper than an Airbnb) in the mountains.
If there are two of you and you have transportation, start and end times can be a lot more flexible.
Make sure to change your location to the area you want to be in. It is often preferable to home owners to know that you are already nearby.
Good luck!
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Your question implies that you have not had a lot of Sitting experience yet. Great advice from @KC1102 —would digest every paragraph of what she says!
Many Sits begin in the morning and end in the evening, so that ending one Sit and starting another on the SAME DAY is quite a dance! Almost impossible to achieve if you don’t have a car, and the back to back Sits need to be in the same city.
This being said, Owners sometimes quote the Sit dates as the same as their vacation dates, but you might realize that the Owner WANTS you to arrive the evening before, which can be a solution or a conundrum!
It would really be best if you PLAN to pay for 6 weeks of Airbnb and hope to get 6 weeks of Sits, in a 3 month period. This would be much less stressful. It is a lot to go from home to home in tight intervals. A break in between Sits can be nice.
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Thanks everyone for your useful comments. I’m going to plan my trip based on funding all my accommodation, then any house sits i can get, that are suitable for me, will be a bonus. I’m definitely not going to apply for sits just because the dates work.
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In case you haven’t already found it, there is a Canadian house sitting site called House Sitters Canada. I’ve had several homeowners contact me through there.
It’s good that you’ve decided to prepare for gaps, and if you do have any, take advantage of them. I sometimes like a couple of night’s gap, for a couple of reasons. 1. If I need time to move from one city to another. 2. If the gap allows me more time to visit something I want to see in the area.
Also, like someone else has said here, sometimes the HO would like you to arrive a day earlier so that can fill a night for you, and if they arrive home later in the evening, you can spend that extra night as well. I’ve had HOs who, although they didn’t need me, didn’t mind if I arrived a day early and stayed an extra night at the end. Some HOs enjoy that.
I wish you all the best.
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Thanks for the tip.
Canada is one huge country! When you indicate interest, ensure you know that applying in British Columbia for one sit, for example, and then in Nova Scotia for the next sit is like applying to Perth, Australia and then Sydney! Very far apart. Perhaps pick a province which seems to have the most sits and go from there.
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I’m a sitter and live in Canada - a suburb of Vancouver. Probably a lot depends on where you’d like to sit in Canada. Sits in Vancouver get snapped up quite quickly as would sits in other major Canadian cities. I can recommend other places in B.C. such as the Okanagan area - 3-4 hours North of Vancouver - beautiful places such as Kelowna, Vernon, Penticton, Kamloops. I think different rural areas in Canada wouldn’t be as competitive to find sits. I’ve noticed sits in the Maritimes don’t get a huge volume of applications. I also see lots of sits on Vancouver Island which may not get the volume of applications either. I think it would be best to map out an itinerary of places you’d like to visit and look for sits accordingly.
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Thanks, that’s helpful.
Our of curiosity, do you have your own car when you sit in the US?
@Rosemary Yes we do. I took possession of it when my mother died a few years back and she had owned it outright so no cost to us at all. When we travel abroad we are able to leave the car at a friend’s house and just pick it up when we come back.
Prior to this though, we didn’t have a vehicle since we spent so much time out of the country and paying for a car just didn’t seem worth it, and wasn’t really in our budget. So when we did come back to the US, we could only do sits that didn’t require a one-we would stay at my mom’s house in NJ for extended periods to visit friends and family. For about 6 years we would take sits here and there to break things up and they were almost exclusively in NYC since it was close by and obviously no need for a car there.
Having a vehicle is definitely an advantage for securing sits since all opportunities are open to us. The good news is that with so many opportunities in the country, there is a decent chance of finding ones that don’t require a vehicle to get there or around the area. So while not having a car can definitely pose a limitation, it certainly isn’t a deal-breaker for somewhere like the US, that has so many listings.
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